Milk (27 page)

People vary the basic formula in many different ways—for example, letting some whole spice like cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, or vanilla bean briefly steep in the hot milk before straining it over the chocolate, or lacing each cup with booze (whiskey, rum, or any preferred liqueur or eau-de-vie). Whipped cream (plain, sweetened, or flavored) is a favorite topping.

I
belong to the era of drugstore soda fountains, a species unknown to about the last two generations of Americans. In those days, moderately priced everyday ice cream was generally creamier, since plebeian and superpremium brands were not as firmly segregated into marketing niches as they are today.

It seems to me that soda-fountain fare then was far more satisfying and less contrived than the ice-cream extravaganzas now served up in multistar restaurants. I can’t imagine anything ever tasting better than a simple butterscotch sundae—or this unpretentious combination of milk, vanilla ice cream, chocolate-flavored syrup, and
malted-milk powder.

Since my youth both the syrup and the malt powder have deteriorated somewhat. It takes some doing to find chocolate-flavored syrup containing more cane sugar than corn syrup. Malted-milk powder lends crucial depth to the whole, but this also can take some searching for, and the few surviving brands tend to be additive-laden. (Plain old ground malted barley and powdered milk
used to be nearly the only ingredients.) On the other hand, the advent of handheld immersion blenders has made it easier for home cooks to produce the right consistency.

In my day malteds were in high nutritional repute and thought to be made even better for growing children by the addition of a raw egg. I like the extra body that this gives, but raw eggs have to be viewed with some caution nowadays.

YIELD:
One large (about 2 cups’ worth) milkshake or 2 small ones

Put all the ingredients into a 1-quart glass measuring pitcher or other sturdy pitcher and begin blending with a handheld immersion blender. (If you don’t have one, combine everything in the jar of a regular blender; it’s a little harder to gauge progress, and you may need to pulse on and off to get a uniform texture.) As it starts coming together and becoming drinkable, try to judge the consistency and thin it with a little more milk if you like. Pour the shake into a deep, well-chilled glass and slurp it up with a straw.

VARIATION:
Chocolate fans may want to substitute chocolate ice cream for part or all of the vanilla ice cream. Note, however, that superchocolatey kinds may drown out the malt flavor.

D
istilled liquor figures in a tribe of heavily sweetened drinks enriched with eggs and cream or milk. Often they are associated with the Christmas or Easter holidays. In the Hispanic
Americas these rich concoctions go by such names as
rompope
(Mexico) or
crème de vie
(Cuba), and are usually based on eggs and canned condensed milk, with or without evaporated milk, coconut milk, and fresh milk and/or cream. In most English-speaking countries the equivalents are made with fresh cream or milk-cream combinations,
and are generically called “eggnogs.” The “nog” part has been rather shakily traced to an old dialect word for strong ale or beer; an early cousin called an “egg flip” was made by “flipping” a mulled beer-egg-sugar mixture from one container to another to raise a good head of froth.

In America, eggnog seems to have had some popularity at least since the early nineteenth century.
Lettice Bryan’s 1839
The Kentucky Housewife
has a family-sized recipe that would look quite familiar now if it didn’t call for “rich sweet milk.” But the big nineteenth-century cooking manuals usually give only single-serving formulas as “restorative” or “fortifying” drinks for invalids. Not until the repeal of Prohibition did the major kitchen bibles regularly print recipes meant for a crowd.

By the time of my introduction to eggnog, creamy milk was a thing of the past and recipes usually called for cream or a cream-milk mixture. Most versions that I’ve encountered are cold, and involve separately beaten egg yolks and whites as well as whipped cream. You beat the yolks with sugar and booze (usually bourbon, Scotch, brandy, or rum) before adding the whipped egg whites and cream, which create a thick frothy topping. Some lily gilders also add more sweetening via a block (or individual dabs per serving) of vanilla ice cream, which gradually melts into the rest of the drink.

I confess that I have lost the taste for cold, very sweet, frothy eggnog. I like it warm or hot, straightforwardly creamy, and offset by something astringent. To those who share my opinion I offer this version of the north German
Hoppelpoppel,
closely taken from
Horst Scharfenberg’s lovely book
Die deutsche Küche.
(To the bewilderment of non-Germans, “Hoppelpoppel” can also refer to a dish of fried eggs and potatoes.) Its starting point is strong brewed tea sweetened with
Kandiszucker,
or lump sugar. Use the French A la Perruche lump sugar if you can get it.

YIELD:
4 to 5 cups

Mix the tea and sugar until the sugar is completely dissolved. Whisk the egg yolks smooth (not frothy), then whisk in the cream and the sweetened tea. Strain into the top of a double boiler set over hot water on low heat. Whisking constantly, warm the mixture until it is hot and slightly thickened. Carefully stir in the rum and serve at once in heatproof punch cups or demitasse cups.

VARIATION:
Some people make Hoppelpoppel with black coffee instead of tea.

T
he star chemistry between milk and liquor used to be common knowledge, and deserves to be so again. Not just milk reinforced with eggs and cream to make eggnog; not just the industrially concentrated canned milk that goes into many Latin American holiday drinks. Given a little sugar and spice, plain old
milk
is a delightful partner for brandy, rum, whiskey, sherry, and nearly anything that goes into other sorts of punch.

There is just one hitch, and by now you probably can repeat it by heart: Plain old milk isn’t what it used to be. Without fresh, creamy unhomogenized milk, much of the reason for making milk punch disappears. Recipes used to call for “rich milk,” “top milk,” and other tokens of yesteryear. Perhaps with the reappearance of fresher and better milk from small dairies, such terms will regain their former meaning. Milk punch made with mass-produced homogenized milk will win few converts, because it won’t have the dewy delicacy of fresh milk with the cream still present as a distinct element. If you can get hold of this necessary ingredient, I suggest the following general proportions per two servings:

Briefly beat or whisk the cold milk in a small bar pitcher and add the optional cream. Stir in the syrup and liquor and pour into punch cups or small tumblers. Grate the nutmeg over the top and serve at once.

Introduction

Homemade Yogurt: Some Thoughts

Homemade Yogurt: Basic Recipe with Cows’ Milk

Yogurt “Cheese” and “Cheese” Balls

Tarator (Cold Yogurt Soup with Cucumbers and Walnuts)

Yogurt-Garlic Sauce

Cacık and Relatives

Cucumber Raita

Banana Raita

Walnut-Yogurt Chutney

Lamb Köfte in Yogurt Sauce

Çılbır (Turkish Poached Eggs in Yogurt Sauce)

“Curd Rice”

Chicken Salad à la Tandoor

Zucchini-Yogurt Salad with Fresh Dill

Shrikhand (Saffron-Scented Yogurt Dessert)

Revani (Yogurt-Semolina Cake with Lemon Syrup)

About Yogurt-Based Drinks

Ayran or Doogh (Turkish- or Persian-Style Yogurt Drink)

About Lassi and Other Indian Soured-Milk Drinks

Salt Lassi

Punjabi-Style Sweet Lassi

Mango Lassi

Tarhana, Trahana, and Relatives

Homemade Greek-Style Sour Trahana

Turkish Tarhana Soup I and II

Y
ogurt is as amazing a piece of human intervention in the destinies of foodstuffs as wine or bread. Probably it is as old as those other two miraculous discoveries, if not older. Like them, it first came into being somewhere around the eastern Mediterranean, or perhaps not far from the Fertile Crescent. (All eulogies of the “Mediterranean diet” that ignore the role of
yogurt in the first-settled parts of the Mediterranean basin are leaving out something crucial.) The somewhat later prehistoric spread of dairying from its first core areas to realms as remote as Kenya, southern India, and the western ranges of the
Chinese empire went hand in hand with the spread of yogurt.

To understand yogurt in its glory, you must set aside some of the images attached to today’s commercial Western versions. Yogurt as made for millennia throughout huge chunks of the Old World usually isn’t called by that name; it goes by dozens (or more) of local names of which the Turkish “yogurt,” pronounced something like “yaawwhhrt” with a prolonged vowel, happens to be the one that got picked up in English during the early twentieth century. In its old strongholds it does not come in a choice of flavors. It has its own intrinsic flavor, combining the taste of a particular animal’s milk (sheep, goat, camel, cow, buffalo, or others) with some degree of lactic-acid sourness. Nobody expects to buy it already sweetened. Sweetness is only one possible flavor effect, achieved by adding honey or fruit preserves—or in India, unrefined palm or cane sugar—when you eat it. It may or may not have a consistency resembling anything you’ve bought in the supermarket yogurt section. Undoctored yogurt can be nearly as pourable as cream or as firm as a thickened pudding, again depending on the animal that gave the milk. It is beautifully creamy, because people born to yogurt-making are also born to the use of unhomogenized whole milk. It is one of the joys of life.